For Spring Summer 2020 , Prada platforms a trinity of contemporary creatives for the faces of their latest menswear campaign. On theme with the SS20 show which took place in Shanghai last year under the themes of duality, reinvention & boyish optimism, the Italian house tapped musician Frank Ocean, actor Austin Butler and director/screenwriter/producer Nicolas Winding as creatives in control of their own invention under the light of Prada SS20.
Shot by photographer David Sims, the campaign features profiles of each talent embodying & portraying their individual definitions of the Prada man. The Prada SS20 collection will soon be available online & in stores, visit Prada to discover the full campaign.
Within the past few seasons designer Thom Browne has managed to establish himself as one of the more creative menswear voices in fashion. Each season he manages to reflect the scenery that is the objet d’art of his complex mind. Creating fusions of menswear with forms of femininity and couture tailoring. For spring summer 2020, he created a story around a secret garden where he unleashed his fantasies of typically masculine sports reinterpreted and blown up with masculine qualities while still caressing the idea of vulnerability. This was shown through XVII century clothing that were reinvented and reinterpreted. From hips that blew up inches wider than usual to oversized shoulders all shown in the classic Thom Brown seersucker fabrics. Football balls pads and codpieces paid tributes to the sports in red, green, yellow among other colours.
Last week in Milan, Marni’s creative director Francesco Risso, who has in some ways become the enfant terrible of Milanese fashion invited guests to a show space that featured a net ceiling filled with plastic bottles for the presentation of his SS20 collection. The show’s set, although containing a strong message to environmental matters we face today was simply just a backdrop, or as the designer himself put it, “a reminder of the issues we’re facing with plastic hanging over our heads.”
The collection itself was a celebration as much as it was a rebellion. Risso imagined an unlikely marriage between Argentine revolutionist Ernesto Che Guevara and American novelist Truman Capote with himself as the wedding planner. This resulted in the harmony of two opposing worlds, carnival meets military. From hats made from staples, to old furs, plastics and debris by artist Shalva Nikvashvili, to slippers crafted from cardboard cut outs and plimsolls dipped in oil.
“A study in clashes, and the uneven harmony that ensues by mixing opposite worlds, jumbling it all together. The extreme graphic properness and formality of suits. The radical rebelliousness of field jackets and militaria, with a tropical slant.”
For the first time in a very long time, Italian fashion house Fendi stepped off site their routined Milanese show space and headed for the gardens of an 18th century villa in central Milan for their SS2020 show. A switch that had been prompted by creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi’s need for a break from the virtually infested world we live in as she takes a minute to appreciate the fruits of Mother Nature . This collection was a version of the Fendi man that goes fishing on weekends and gardens in his spare time. Sartorial workwear pieces were presented with a casual elegance that allow their wearers a sort of relaxed eased approach towards life.
From khaki cotton overalls, to striped beach slips, to fishmerman style vests and cargo pants. Throughout the collection, the house also revealed their collaboration with renown “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino who drafted a few botanical prints for the collection. These were brought out through digital prints and cut out knit wear. The colour palette was one that blended with the habitat ranging from beiges, to greens , browns and whites. In regards to accessories, the house debuted a Pequin printed Fendi watering can, garden baskets, big totes, pouch bags as well as versions of the Fendi baguette and peekaboo bags. This collection was a breath of fresh air for the house, one that in some ways allows for a sort of reset, and more than anything conjures the desire for a vacation.
On the occasion of their fifth anniversary, Italian minimalist brand SUNNEI adopted an urban space in the Rubattino area of eastern Milan, which they transformed into what they now dub as Bianco Sunnei. The space, an entirely normal concrete area that sat underneath a giant bridge in Milano’s Parco dell’Acqua and has been regenerated as a visual oasis coated in white paint. A type of maximal minimalism that didn’t call for much to make a statement than a well thought out concept. This sort of effortless assertive simplicity was strung throughout the brand’s SS2020 collection which had their freshly created space as it’s backdrop.
The collection was aimed towards a specific colour palette which not only complemented the space, but embraced some of the house’s iconic runway history , from plain white, to the khaki browns, somber citruses, lime greens to sky blues and midnight blacks. Each transition gliding into another as if it were some sort of poetry. But not just any kind of poem, no, this was a haiku — three lines, seventeen syllables, 17 words. Very simple but meticulously planned as to evoke all the right feelings. Boxy volumes were in abundance with cargo pants, monochromatic suits, denim jackets and coats, knit dresses that explore a few moments of layering. Fabrics move like liquid as the brand uses this moment to highlight their collaboration with Albiate 1830 — a branch of Italian eco-friendly fabric company Albini. This is seen through 3D woven nylon yarns, fresh leathers, and a deckchair-striped cotton poplin. Last season the designer duo presented a collection as a stance resistant against the wave of streetwear by referencing the 2000s. This season they affirmed that notion of in some ways being anti-fashion- Not like Rick Owens anti-fashion, and although similar not even Marni’s anti-fashion. Just simply riding , moving , sketching to the beats of their own rhythms, which happens to be in the opposite direction of everyone else. Either way this has become the duo’s strong suit.
Last weekend British designer Charles Jeffrey revealed his SS2020 men’s collection during London Fashion Week. Within the past few seasons Jeffrey has established himself to be not just a designer but a showman, a thespian, a poet who doesn’t just put needle to thread without there being deep intention manifested behind it. Each season the designer has delivered full on productions that leaves his audience in wonder of the world around them about matters that are often so blatantly obvious, repackaged and re-presented by the designer in a way that manifests itself within the viewer. Last season Jeffrey presented an exhilarating and immersive Weimar Republic club performance with nods to Peter Pan and sexuality. However this season the designer opted for a rather more sober tone as he drew inspiration from the concept of punk culture and the idea of how it was created as a default to the times in which we lived.
This collection as he said, was “an eruption beneath violent pressure, as a diamond under the heat,” in reference to the political, social and natural climates in which we currently live. His show began with the designer himself walking down the runway of The British Library reading a passage from “In the Beginning,” by Dylan Thomas. Followed by a collection of seersucker suiting, featherweight jacquards referencing armour and civil service uniforms in reference to the need for both freedom and protection; opal blue silk column dresses styled with contradictory military jackets and some pieces containing intricately layered rips and tears representative as sorts of fault lines.
Some models sported full face paintings done and extravagant head pieces and fishnet stockings which reinforced the collection’s punk influence. The collection was acted almost like a map, like a polaroid of this generation’s pain and demise, a prediction maybe, of what such a movement like the punk subculture would have looked like in the year 2019.
Twitter
Tumblr
YouTube
Facebook
Instagram
